Performing at the scale of infrastructure.

While preparing to install 20×80-foot banners on a grain elevator for Stored Potential, we quickly became familiar with the adjacent abandoned rail track, a vestige of the industrial networks once supporting the grain elevator. A continuation of the Field Club Trail to the north, this portion of the old Belt Line Rail Corridor remains the last missing link to complete a citywide trail system. Once the thickets of scrub were cleared and the exposed industrial waste removed to make way for cranes to install the banners, we realized the importance of doing something for people to experience this long forgotten place up close. We would construct a dinner table directly on top of the old rail bed running the length of the newly bannered grain elevator. This event would bring people to an unlikely place to dine in the shadow of artist interpretation about the regional landscape.

An unprecedented pairing of 10-local chefs worked with culinary students, over 40-local farmers, a team of animated servers, and dozens of volunteers, to serve a 5-course meal to 500 people seated at the table. Diners arrived via the Field Club Trail to what was, for a day, a dinner table as its continuation. The combination of the gigantic artwork and choreography of the dinner created an experience of juxtaposed scales: the massiveness of industrial agriculture and the human dimensions of a meal. This event made an indelible mark on the community: animating a public space, momentarily animating the neighborhood in a new way, creating new alliances among chefs and farmers.